LG scores with the Rumor Touch, a capable messaging device with plenty of thoughtful design touches that combine well with Sprint's reasonably-priced data plans.

The LG Rumor Touch looks very different than the prior Rumor ($49, ) and Rumor2 ($49, ). While all three are horizontal sliders, the Rumor Touch finally gives you the best of both worlds: an expansive 3-inch touch screen, and a slide-out, QWERTY keyboard. It's not even that heavy, either. With a solid design, decent camera, and built-in Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter support, it's a huge improvement on the disappointing Rumor2, and it wins our Editors' Choice award for Sprint feature phones. It's ideal for messaging fiends who don't want to upgrade to the full smartphone experience.

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Design, Call Quality, and Apps
The Rumor Touch measures 4.2 by 2.2 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.7 ounces. It's fashioned in black plastic with a sharp-looking, dark blue accent line around the sides. A red version, complete with a red keyboard instead of a black one, is on the way. The soft-touch back panel felt durable, and the sliding mechanism felt solid. The 240-by-400-pixel, plastic resistive touch screen was reasonably accurate. Dialing wasn't tough, although I had to slow down to avoid missed numbers. The roomy, five-row QWERTY keyboard was arranged well and was comfortable to use in practice, although the keys were a little slippery and tough to press.

The Rumor Touch is a dual-band (850/1900 MHz) EV-DO Rev. 0 device without Wi-Fi. Voice quality was clear and smooth, with plenty of gain in the earpiece. Callers said I sounded crystal clear on the other side. I tested the phone on a windy day; callers heard a bit of wind noise, but didn't find it obtrusive. Calls sounded fine through an Aliph Jawbone Icon ($99, ) Bluetooth headset though pairing took several extra steps more than it should have. Voice dialing didn't require training and worked fine over Bluetooth. The speakerphone was loud and powerful, but I heard a little distortion at top volume. Battery life was average at just under five hours of talk time.

The home screen displays nifty little bubbles that show recent activity, such as missed calls and new voice mail messages. Tap a bubble's close box, and it disappears, letting the others slide upwards. Click the Call End key, and you'll bring up the on-screen dial pad; tapping on the screen displays the main menu. All of the menus are vertical lists you can swipe up and down, and getting around was easy.

Sprint preloads a social networking app from Good with Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, but skips an IM client for mysterious reasons. The Access NetFront 3.5.1 browser is on board primarily for WAP browsing, but you can replace it with the far superior Opera Mini 5 (Free, ) and have a real browsing experience. The Rumor Touch also supports the usual array of Sprint multimedia services, including Sprint TV, Sprint Navigation, Sprint Music, and Sprint Mobile Email with personal and corporate calendar sync. All of these are included in Sprint's Everything Data plans, which look like a seriously good deal next to AT&T and Verizon's nickel-and-diming approach.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
The Rumor Touch is a solid music phone. The side-mounted MicroSD memory card slot accepts 32GB cards; my 16GB SanDisk card worked fine, and LG throws in a 1GB card to get you started. There's 46MB of free internal memory. A standard-size 3.5mm headphone jack on the side makes finding earbuds easy. The handset fired up the clumsy Sprint Music Store app every time I wanted to play music, which was a little annoying. MP3 and AAC tracks sounded crisp and clear over Motorola MotoROKR S9-HD ($129.99, ) stereo Bluetooth headphones, and the app displayed large album art graphics.

The Rumor Touch isn't designed to play video files; I could trick it by stuffing .3GP videos into the photos folder on the memory card, but it wouldn't play them in full screen mode, or send audio over Bluetooth.

The 2-megapixel camera lacks auto-focus or a flash. Test photos were sharp, detailed, and, at least for outdoor shots, a little flat. Indoor shots had a softer focus, but shutter speeds were fast enough to prevent serious blur. Recorded 320-by-240-pixel videos looked a little jerky and blurry at 12 frames per second.

Combined with Sprint's unlimited data plans, the Rumor Touch is a terrific, well-rounded feature phone at a reasonable price. Sprint has other good messaging phones in its lineup, such as the LG Lotus Elite ($99.99, ) and Sanyo Incognito ($49.99, ). If you're looking for more power, the Palm Pre ($149.99, ) smartphone makes a dandy messaging phone and runs thousands of WebOS apps. But in the world of "dumb" phones, the Rumor Touch's high-quality design and power make it Sprint's state of the art.

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About the Author

Jamie Lendino is the Editor-in-Chief of ExtremeTech.com, and has written for PCMag.com and the print magazine since 2005. Recently, Jamie ran the consumer electronics and mobile teams at PCMag, and before that, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Smart Device Central, PCMag's dedicated smartphone site, for its entire three-year run from 2006 to 2009. Pri... See Full Bio

LG Rumor Touch (Sprint)

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